Pieces of the People We Love
by wrecking hotel rooms
Summary: We do what we do to get by, and then we need a release.


Disclaimer: Yeah. Nothing's mine.

A/N: I don't really know where this came from… so yeah. Be nice. Its kind of AU, with a lot of back history. Oneshot unless I change my mind.

Bella walks to the end of the hall and opens the door to the rarely used attic; full of old crap she and Charlie don't use anymore. Tables, chests filled with old linens, boxes full of birthday cards and Christmas cards and pictures of long- dead relatives.

She wanders past all of this, shoving her way through lamps and yet more boxes, to the back of the musty attic, her destination. She sees what she was looking for, piles of unmarked boxes gray with dust and age. She picks up the one closest to her and places it on an unusual open patch of the cramped room.

She opens it, to see heaps of old photo albums. Curious, she selects one at random and pulls back the first page, delicately, to hear the leaves crackle with age and disuse. The images depicted there make her smile. A beautiful young woman, at the peak of her youth, in a flowing white gown and lace veil, holding a bouquet of flowers. A handsome young man in a tux with a romantic's smile, beaming with love and pride at his bride. The couple holding hands in front of a minister with dream-like grins on their faces. The same couple, kissing each other with a passion and enthusiasm only young love can have.

She hums happily to herself, the pictures of her parents wedding day, the epitome of their love, having pleased her and warmed her heart. She rifles through the rest of the album and box, seeing similar images toward the beginning, characterized by affection and joy, but those becoming more and more infrequent.

_How sad,_ she sighs to herself,_ that we only hold those moments of pure love and devotion for so short a time, before it crumbles to ash and fades away into nothingness. Edward and I will not end up like that. He will change me. Our love can last for eternity._ She adds with a determined nod of her head. She sets that particular box aside, to be perused with more scrutiny later.

She picks up another box, breaking the tape. The albums here contain pictures of her unwilling summer visits. Summer holidays, father- daughter activities Charlie had arranged, and fishing, endlessly fishing. She sorts the boxes for what feels like hours, seeing faces never gazed upon, of friends long- forgotten, of grandparents, of aunts, uncles, cousins. The boxes are a veritable treasure trove of memories. She makes her way through them, one by one.

Until only four are left. These look newer than the rest, and are haphazardly placed. Recognition dawns on her face, along with fear, pain, and horror. _No,_ she silently pleads,_ not these. Any but these._ With trembling hands and an ashen face, she slowly, oh so slowly, stands up, and walks over to one and hesitantly pulls at the flaps. She knows what she will find inside, but prays that she is wrong. She cringes at the contents revealed to her watering eyes.

A blue, sequined dress. A tube of flaked, red lipstick. A pair of worn, black pumps, falling apart at the straps and soles, but lovingly sewn back together with mismatched thread. Pages and pages of loose sheets with diagrams of stage directions and side notes of alterations to blocking and movements. And so many, many scripts with the familiar beloved scrawl across almost every last one. This was Heather. She closes this box with a gasp, and reaches desperately for another. The flood of memories cannot be stopped; she is now hungry for more, her system craving it, like a drug.

The next box. Cardboard is ripped aside in haste. Inside, a broken Fender; a cracked, blue guitar chip; posters of bands whose popularity has long since faded; sheets of bars and notes. A tee shirt, reading 'Devil's Children' in simple, white letters. The most they could afford with their pitiful income- little to none. Towards the bottom, there lie remains of a darker past. A syringe; a spoon. An old, rusted blade with dried blood on the edges. A blood-dried, torn strip of clothe with more knots and holes than material. These objects make her cringe in shame and pain, and bring a fresh round of tears. Matthew… Matt.

This box is set aside carefully, reverently, and she turns to another. This one holds an old crank camera, broken with overuse. A camera so apparently worthless you couldn't make ten dollars off of it at a pawnshop on the Lower West End. However, the camera's worth to her isn't measured in dollars and cents, but memories, good and not so good, and love.

Underneath the camera lie reels upon reels of film, with labels written in a meticulous, careful hand. Also inside is frayed white canvas, where the outlines of moving, loving and loved images still dance and flicker, unchanged by the filmmaker's prolonged and permanent absence. Ethan. Ethan's sin is there also; a frayed, crumbling piece of rope that savages and shreds her mangled, bleeding heart in ways she thought not possible.

How is it that whenever we believe we have reached our breaking point; that it seems we can endure no more without burning from the inside out from sheer agony, fate deals us yet another blow, another scar we are forced to bear on the bloody canvas of our broken souls? Bitter are her thoughts, reeling from the weight if her memories.

Ethan is placed wit the others, leaving one final box, standing a silent, screaming, vigil. The one it both pleased and hurt her to see. She felt relief; that it was there, pain for the same reason. A paradox, an oxymoron, a reality she was forced to live daily. Jordan, the last man standing. Dust is blown away, brushed to the side as the ashes of ourselves we wish to scatter. A plethora of brushes, used to capture the real, the truth, and the imaginary, the products of our dreams. Charcoal, chalk, pigments, all used to glorify our lives and sway our thoughts, when all they are reduced to in the end are trinkets, objects of nostalgic value left to waste away in a box in an attic, the remnants of our lives.

Jordan, the wisest of them all, realized this, and thus bequeathed _his_ remnants to her, the last left standing, in order for her to carry them with her until she too was nothing more than knickknacks in a box. With this final thought, she sealed the box, Jordan's life, and gazed at the pile of cardboard of amazing, inspiring people she had once known, who now only existed in those boxes.

Unable to withstand the emotional storm rampaging within her longer, she fled the attic, her original intentions forgotten. She ran into the bathroom, her sobs echoing off the mirror and through her bleeding heart. She cringed as she realized this was how Matt had ended, alone, in pain, and in a bathroom.

The cold, hard truth crashing down on her, the most important truth, if not the _only_ truth, we must gather from this life: that nothing lasts forever. Not life. Not hope. Not the supernatural. Not even… _love._ A bland, sheer truth that had been staring her in the face her entire life; one she had chosen to ignore. One that she had finally accepted. In fact, Jordan probably meant for it to happen this way. He had known that, eventually, he would die, like everything else, and by his own hand, most likely. Intended for her to find the boxes. Their essence was in those boxes. And wasn't that like Jordan, he wanted her to find out through him, in hopes to soften the blow. If not through him directly, then through his memory. After all, nothing lasts forever.

A/N: Yeah, I know, very angsty, especially there at the end. Deal people. The message of this whole story for you morons who don't get it, is for Bella to realize nothing lasts forever, and to bring her insecurities to the surface. I would also appreciate reviews to tell me how I did. Hint hint 


End file.
